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INDIEPIX FESTIVAL FAVORITES: VOLUME 5

INDIEPIX FESTIVAL FAVORITES VOLUME 5 REVIEWED

After the death of his mother a young boy must go to his father who abandoned them. The father lived in exile in a Jermal. For those who are like me and didn’t know what a Jermal his before seeing that film. It’s some kind of wooden shack in the middle of the sea where people fish. His father hires kids to do the job illegally.

The young boy goes through the basic Dickens style setup. He gets beat up by kids and adults tend to treat him like garbage. All the while, he dreams of a better life somewhere far from the jermal. It’s basic melodrama that actually plays well against the foreign ghetto of the sea.

A Latina mother and her two children are stranded in Queens when their philandering, irresponsible father deserts them. There English is almost nil and now they must support themselves asap. First the wife tries selling homemade Espanadas on the street. Then she tries getting day labor by standing on Latino labor street corners. And finally ends up collecting cans for their deposits with her young son and daughter beside her. They are barely making it when they get evicted from their apartment. And then they become homeless and have to sleep outdoors.

“Entre Nos” unfolds as a series of relentlessly-grim scenarios which add up to paint a plausible picture of the enormous challenges encountered by foreigners endeavoring to adjust to this country’s unforgiving inner-city environs. Miraculously, against all odds, the hardy trio not only survives but ultimately flourishes, with the audience being informed via telling, closing credits postscripts that matriarch Mariana eventually remarried and had another daughter, that her stoic, young son grew up to become a successful college administrator.

“That Girl in Yellow Boots” has been slammed as being shocking for the sake of being different in Bollywood. Honestly, I think the film moves past that. The film works as a social horror story about what it’s like to be in a strange land searching for someone you haven’t seen in ages. It’s the kind of material that makes up stress nightmares. That being said, you wouldn’t see this stuff in most American movies.

Watching a young lady try to survive in Mumbai is harrowing. Seeing as every man turns on her and then the land of India rejects her, you almost wonder if she should just kill herself. There’s a real desire for a sense of finality that never comes. I don’t know why that creeped me out so bad. But, damn if it hasn’t set on my mind.